San Francisco is top eating, drinking town

People enjoy happy hour at Poquito restaurant in San Francisco in March. Photo: John Storey

It’s no surprise that San Francisco has more restaurants per household than any other metro area in the nation. But it also has one of the highest concentrations of bars, according to a new study by Jed Kolko, chief economist with real estate Web site Trulia.

Kolko divided the number of sit-down restaurants and drinking establishments by the number of households in each metro area and then multiplied by 10,000. He created a top 10 lists for restaurants and another for bars.

San Francisco was the only city that made both lists. It ranked No. 1 on the restaurant list. “No other major metro comes close: at 39.3 per 10,000 households, San Francisco has nearly 50% more restaurants relative to its size than #2 Fairfield County, CT,” Kolko wrote in a blog post.

The San Francisco metro area, which also includes Marin and San Mateo counties, ranked No. 8 on the bar list, with six per 10,000 households compared to 8.6 per 10,000 households for top-ranked New Orleans.

Kolko noted that all of the restaurant-centric cities were on or near the coasts while most of the big drinking towns were in the heartland.

Asked whether San Francisco ranked high on both because of its tourism industry, Kolko said, “It helps to have visitors. It also helps to be a rich city, where even the locals have more money to eat out.”

It also helps to have an industry nearby that nurtures eating or drinking. He pointed out that Milwaukee, No. 2 on the booze list, has the beer industry and San Francisco “has its wine culture.”

When Kolko correlated his eating and drinking lists to housing prices, he found that “living in a great eating town isn’t cheap: Homes for sales in seven of the top 10 eating towns have a median price per square foot of $200 or more.”

Three of the top 10 — Seattle, Providence and Portland, Ore. — were more affordable. “Lots of young chefs choose these smaller cities because it’s cheaper to start up restaurants there than in more expensive markets like San Francisco and New York,” Kolko wrote.

Kolko noted that San Francisco also has the most nation’s most expensive real estate. So the next time someone tells you they will be eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches after they buy a house, ask what time you should make the reservation.